


time put a rope around my head

by m4rkab



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Angst, Dehumanization, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Suicidal Thoughts, only for a second, spoilers for the demo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 06:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17761766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m4rkab/pseuds/m4rkab
Summary: The body you inhabit is not yours.It never was.This was the most essential lesson the Farm taught you.





	time put a rope around my head

**Author's Note:**

> this game deeply upset me so of course i had to write upsetting things about it.
> 
> title from don't you cry for me by cobi

It has been a week, and though you do not feel safe – you have never felt safe – you are beginning to lose some of the immediate terror of being recaptured. This is not your first escape; you know how the Farm works.

You find a cheap motel in some tiny desert town. It is a simple enough matter to touch the minds of the staff, delicate in a way that you have not often been, that the Farm has not often asked for, and paint them a picture of a different person entirely; equally simple to convince them you have paid.

The ease with which you can influence minds now is almost frightening, though it should not be. You were, after all, made for a singular purpose.

In the dimly-lit bathroom, you look at yourself in the mirror; the fuzz of red hair shaved so close to your scalp you can still see the cuts, the tired grey eyes. Your skin is concealed behind layers of fabric now, but you know it, have been forced to learn; you can see every line even when you close your eyes, like the imprint of sunlight seared into your vision. A reminder that the body you inhabit is not yours.

It never was.

This was the most essential lesson the Farm taught you.

 

* * *

 

The body they gave you is a tool. Just as you are.

You think it is this that made it easier to realize that you did not identify with it as you should.

At the Farm, they had as much of a chance to call you it as he. Only one was meant to be dehumanizing, you know – to tell you that you were nothing more than an object, that every part of you belonged to the Farm. They would have been thrilled to know that both had the same impact, which is why you never let them know.

You learn fast. Perhaps that is a product of being a machine.

And then, of course, you got free, and the world knew you as Sidestep and the world knew you as they (and hearing that in someone else’s voice, genuine, for just a moment it made everything worth it), which only made it worse when the Farm took you back.

You are a tool, after all, and tools do not question. Tools do not wonder. They are made, and they function as they are programmed.

Anything else is a delusion.

 

* * *

 

The core of what you are is a chip.

You have not seen your own, but you have seen others’. A deceptively tiny thing of silicon nestled against your brain. The heart of you; the flesh-and-blood thing in your chest only keeps the body you have been given alive. Without it, you know – this body would breathe, and its heart would beat, but it would be empty. A shell.

Just like you.

You were made for each other, in some strange twisted way.

Still, you cannot help but feel possessive of the body you inhabit. It might not be yours, but you know it as well as anything; the sharp sting of pain firing along the nerves, the ache of its muscles when you run, the bite of restraints into its wrists, the pinprick of a needle in the crook of its elbow.

But that is not because you love it.

You do not like to think of it as part of you – after all, at the core of the matter, it is not you so much as a vehicle you have been given to pilot, and in this way you can think less about the shiny orange tattoos striping its skin. But together you have been beaten down and ripped apart, crushed and rebuilt over and over again, and you are still standing. It is still standing for you.

You feel you owe it something. You feel like it should get to see the Farm burn, too, before you take up the gun again.

Before you can _finally_ let yourself go.

This time there will be no Ortega to stop you.

 

* * *

 

You like to think you have moved on from friendship. From…whatever it is you had, back in the day. You know better than anyone that caring is a weakness, and one that will be exploited at every available opportunity.

But you are not in the business of lying to yourself. If you ever had been, you think the Farm would have beaten it out of you.

You imagine Ortega. Running into him again. What would he say? Would he care?

If he knew what you were?

It is not something you like to think of, but your thoughts are traitors to you as much as the Farm. Because you know he would not – you know it with the cold-iron certainty with which you know every unpleasant fact about yourself, which is to say all of them – but everything said, you still hope, because after seven years you still remember his smile, his lips on yours.

He has never seen the body you wear. You have never let him get that close. You have never let him so much as guess that under Sidestep’s suit you are branded. No different than an animal. That you are not a person so much as a piece of silicon with delusions of being real.

And still you think of showing him. Watching his face. Not seeing the disgust you _know_ , beyond a shadow of a doubt, will be there.

You are not a person, but you have always been a fool.

 

* * *

 

You have never felt comfortable in the skin they gave you, the skin you have inhabited since you were created, so it is not a surprise that you do not feel comfortable in Lucius’ either.

It is at least a different discomfort. You feel disconnected from Lucius in a way unique to his body. You do not share a gender or a skin color; in some ways you are treated worse because of it, because at least the body the Farm gave you looks white, and it is easy to hide the marks that say, plainly, that you are not human.

This body was not given to you by the Farm, was not laboratory-made and branded and broken and rebuilt, but it is alien to you in an entirely different way.

You are not thinking about stealing him when you find him. He is just convenient. But even though he is comatose, no more alive than a re-gene without its chip, even though you are not truly taking anything from him, he is a body you have stolen and molded for your purposes. As you belong to the Farm, he belongs to you, and though you try to keep that from your mind, like anything you wish to ignore it never quite stops haunting you.

He is your mask, a face that you can present to the world, entirely separate but for the fact that behind his eyes and behind his smile you are driving; you are imitating a human life. Behind him you are growing your teeth and claws, your armor against the world, and he is the tool that lets you.

He might look normal, but there is nothing that makes you realize that you are, at the heart of it, a weapon, quite like Lucius.

 

* * *

 

The body they birthed you in is a that of a cuckoo. An infiltration unit, designed to look normal. To look human. To look nothing like what you actually are.

This is why, when you finally hit upon your idea – to strike back, to take control of yourself in a way you never have before, even as Sidestep – you realize you have an opportunity to show everyone, show yourself, what is behind the lie of the flesh and bone you wear.

It is in the early stages, but you have a plan. For the mirror-plane of the face, the shards like spines down the arms, shattered like the window you fell through. Like your face in the mirror, like your fist against the glass.

Alien. Inhuman. Empty.

The body you inhabit is not yours.

This one will be.


End file.
